appreciation of the significance of his acts. It is therefore the liberal ideal that a man must seek himself to be the first judge of his own acts, as to whether in the last analysis they are right or wrong. The conception that a man may do whatever he is paid to do, provided his acts do not come under the effective censure of the state, is no more liberal than it is lovely. It seems to be the neglect of the liberal ideal that has brought us face to face with our present condition in which talented and trained men are swifter to do evil than the will of the people is found ready to check the evil through laws.
The first element, therefore, of the liberal as distinguished from the technical function of education, at the present time, is that men trained for any art should know and fully recognize what things in life are of greatest worth, and should acquire the habit of acting according to that conception; especially in their own fields or art. While history, literature and philosophy seem to be the subject-matter through which such education may be given, it is obvious that their association with technical pursuits would need to be made much closer than is usual, if the aspect of liberalism which I have described is to be realized.
A second respect in which, I think, the liberal in education needs sharply to be contrasted with the technical drift in modern education, may be styled "appreciation." In some occupations, it is true, there is a strictly technical necessity that a man must grasp the scientific, social and esthetic significance of his task, if he is to do his work well; but in countless other lines of technical achievement, from the work of a factory hand to that of a railway president, it is idle to assert that a proper appreciation of these aspects of his work is essential to his technical success. And, indeed, it is essential that a man's appreciation of the meaning of his work should be cherished quite independently of any possibility of use and reward; though of course if the reward come, all the better. Freedom and the adequate realization of personality require that a man's work "have meaning to himself." Let him see within his work, in Dewey's words, "all that there is in it of large and human significance," and he will not be the slave of tomorrow's promised smiles.
There is no "job" that does not present innumerable phases of interest, and problems for investigation to the mind trained in physics and chemistry, none that is not linked in a hundred ways with all the problems and needs of the social organism, and with the history of man's effort and advance, his folly and despair. There is no task, I suppose, in which the eye and ear trained to appreciation may not detect features of beauty and romance and mystery. And to the philosophic mind the very monotony of the toil is linked with the tireless movement of ocean and planet, while the spirit that endures it is felt to be kin and near to the will and temper of heroes in all ages.
